1,600 Scientists Just Signed A Letter Opposing A Legal Definition Of A Gender Binary

[Bonions]

Ffs

www.buzzfeednews.com/article/azeenghorayshi/scientists-vs-gender-binary

I tried to choose the worst bits but couldn’t as it’s all pretty awful

An open letter that denounces attempts to define gender as a binary trait based on anatomy or genetic tests has gathered signatures from more than 1,600 scientists.

The letter, which includes the signatures of eight Nobel laureates, was written in response to a memo drafted in spring of 2017 by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to the New York Times. The memo reportedly urged government agencies to adopt a legal definition of sex “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable,” according to the Times.

The memo also reportedly stated that any disputes over a person’s sex would be clarified using genetic testing, a claim that scientists say is unscientific and unethical.

The Trump administration has not confirmed the memo or issued any statement — or proposed regulation — that adopts the views in the memo.

The report incited much debate on Twitter, and today more than 50 companies, including Apple, Google, and Facebook, released a letter condemning it. It also prompted 22 scientists to put together an opposition letter, addressed to “our elected representatives.”

“This proposal is fundamentally inconsistent not only with science, but also with ethical practices, human rights, and basic dignity,” the scientists wrote. “Though scientists are just beginning to understand the biological basis of gender identity, it is clear that many factors, known and unknown, mediate the complex links between identity, genes, and anatomy.”

The letter stressed that both biological sex and gender fall on a spectrum. Roughly 1 in every 2,000 babies in the US are born with what are called intersex traits: anatomy, hormone levels, or chromosomes that fall somewhere between what’s typically defined as male or female. An estimated 1.4 million adults in the US identify as transgender, meaning their gender identity does not correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth.

“As a geneticist and as someone who studies reproduction on a biological level, I can safely say that their scientific reasons are simply not based in science,” Mollie Manier, an assistant professor of biology at George Washington University and one of the coauthors of the letter, told BuzzFeed News. “The science on gender is very much still in development, but more importantly, the lived experiences of transgender and intersex people should not be co-opted by a genetic test.”

Others pointed out that genes and chromosomes alone can’t predict someone’s sex or gender.

“The relationship between someone’s genotype, or their DNA, and their phenotype, or their traits, is very complicated, and sex and gender are no exception,” said Russell Neches, a postdoc studying the evolution of genomes at the Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley Labs. “These are human beings we're talking about, so it's not enough to have a concept of sex and gender that only works for the majority.”

For transgender scientists, the letter was personal.

“As a trans woman and as a scientist, it’s inherently an attack on my humanity, my ability to exist in the world, and to safely navigate certain spaces,” said Mika Tosca, an assistant professor of climate science at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “It was really important that we gather as many scientists as we could to say that so scientists ourselves were not complicit in promoting this wholly flawed nonscientific effort.”

The letter also emphasized the dangers of any policy forcing medical professionals to stray from recognizing an individual’s self-identified gender. “Our best available evidence shows that affirmation of gender identity is paramount to the survival, health, and livelihood of transgender and intersex people,” the letter states.

OldCrone

See what you did there you picked the chemist's did you check out the genetists work at all

as someone else entered the thread that I've missed or have you just decided to become really offensive all of a sudden?

In order to produce a brand-new human, you still need a female gamete from a woman and a male gamete from a man, meeting and joining within the woman's body.

That is sex.

Gender? Have at it! Fill yer boots! So long as you don't threaten my rights as a woman, our collective rights as women; and my rights and duty as a mother to protect my children.

I do think its time they get something sorted with all of this once and for all. It Shouldnt take away rights of trans people to self identify and for the most part to be identified as their chosen gender choice amongst their family and friends to be able to adopt as normal a life as possible in society.

The way in which we identify determines who we are and that is vital. there are no restrictions on this nor should there be. A guy in Scotland went to live in the wilderness and got his whole body tattooed as a wild cat to express himself. I could want to become a billy goat and only eat hay, Ok thats extreme but its our own choice right?.The difference being for the continuity and common understanding in society we must allstill be recognised by the law according to what we actually are rather than allude to be.

I dont think it can be forgotten however that while there may be different spectrums of a particular gender that doesn't remove the fact that their true idendity can only be one or the other and no amount of pretending or feeling the opposite can ever change that ultimately important factor.
The assertions about hermaphrodite and intersex people i dont believe change this either. They are all abnormalities in varying forms and degrees of severity, but just because parts are missing or extra parts are present i dont believe there has ever been a case in history of gender identification not being determined as while the parts may be there from both, never have both functioned normally.

A number can only be odd or even just like humans can only be male or female. We should always be sympathetic to the feelings of people who feel they fit into neither and be understanding by recognising their individuality. However, that has to be balanced. We cant make up a 3rd gender or have numerous gender determinations that each person chooses based on how they feel, because they simply dont exist, not to mention the problems it would cause with safety and the likes. While i think a handful of people may feel their identity threatened by a determination being made one way or the other, but the majority will probably accept the importance of sticking with whats scientific and based on sound logic

My DD actually joked with me to wind me up that her BF was going to self identify as a girl a week before the school trip to get in the same tent as her. While i saw the comical side the underlying notion is unnervingly real and its got to stop. Another PC notion thats gone on long enough

i may be wrong about this so correct me if so but isn't gender identified by the simple absence of a y chromosome if female and if y present if male? Surely thats a straightforward non invasive test?

I dont really know why its took so long to sort this out nor do i really understand what exactly the opposing argument is or even can be to something i never thought was in dispute. Either way best it be put to bed one way or another.

i may be wrong about this so correct me if so but isn't gender identified by the simple absence of a y chromosome if female and if y present if male? Surely thats a straightforward non invasive test

No, what you wrote is incorrect because you used the wrong term. "Gender" is not the same as biological sex. "Gender" means "a feeling in a man's head" otherwise known as a stereotype.

The over-arching problem is that for decades people have used the word gender in place of bio sex, cos they're prudes afraid to use the word sex. (Sex sex sex. wheeeeeee. imma not a prude.) And then trans come along to exploit that confusion. They get you to agree that "gender is between your ears" and everybody goes along with it cos they assume it's just a nonsensical way to describe that of course someone with a male body has a male liver and a male left elbow and a male brain.

Fooled you, off to the gulag you go.

Everything else you said was right, tho, and I agree with you. and apologies for the silliness, I haven't annihilated dinner out of existence yet.

Awake due to snottiness. Thanks to whoever it was posted the list of Nobel prize winners.

So (being a physical scientist) I just googled the physiology winners and I would say four out of five of them win the Nobel for work which is directly relevant to the discussion (and the fifth, having won it for telemorase, also is obviously a brilliant geneticist albeit not one working directly in the links between genetics and embryo development).

So what I'd love to see is their scientific take on the question Bowl poses, namely how being able to give a detailed explanation of how various DSDs makes for a spectrum in biological sex, rather than a species in which normal reproductively functioning individuals are male or female, against which background a minority of individuals have disorders of this normal functioning. I think that would make for a really interesting read (and would obviously be orders of magnitude more informative than the ridiculous "as a biology teacher" thing that did the rounds of Facebook).

I'd also be fascinated to know how they tie this up with being transgender, because we also know that many trans people do not have DSDs, for instance the late transitioning transwomen who father several children before coming out as trans. Whatever is going on there (and I am open to the possibility that part of what's going on has a physiological underpinning - though that possibility does not mean that TW A W), I think it unlikely that any physiological underpinning in that case is driven by a DSD explicable in terms of genetics/embryology.

Yes, Mandalayagain, you're right that many scholars in those disciplines would argue for sex being discursively produced, but there is by no means a consensus on this, especially among feminist historians and anthropologists, and there is much contestation of this emphasis on language as the be-all-and-end-all of meaning. It's probably because those two disciplines sit in a unique position within the academy, halfway between the humanities and the social sciences, which is why I was surprised to see Anthropologists taking a rather postmodern/humanist stand on this, while at the same time labelling themselves "scientists"; there's this weird contradiction there; a critique of science and its reliance on empiricism, while they are coopting the authority of the label "scientist".

Nevertheless, most historians would see themselves as ultimately relying on material reality (facts) to understand the history of culture and meaning (eg, gender ideology) and Anthropologists also, rely on their empirical observations of their subjects as evidence. So if, as an Anthropologist, one acknowledges the vast diversity of cultural understandings of what it means to be feminine or masculine, then how can this static idea of gender identity (largely defined in the West now as some sort of essence) be congruent with that?

Sorry to be so long-winded about it, but I don't really get the turn this has all taken in the academy; scientists suddenly arguing for a pomo humanist understanding of sex, and Anthropologists defining themselves as scientists.

Can anyone provide any clarification as to whether these are medical and biology scientists? Or social 'scientists', who are 'soft science' bachelor of arts graduates? 'Social science' is a science in the same way that 'domestic science' is a science

Their names and disciplines are listed. There are a lot of biologists.

The only female Nobel laureate (physiology and medicine) did work on DNA and chromosomes.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_W._Greider

So, do we agree that there are two human sexes - female and male, women and men?

But gender is whatever you make of it, if indeed, gender means anything at all to you; because lots of us find "gender" meaningless,.

Biiology can be identified fairly quickly and accurately.

So 1600 supposedly clever people are wrong. It's happened before. Back in the early part of the 20th century Eugenics was a popular movement. Look up some of the people who supported or flirted with it, you will be (unpleasantly) surprised. It was used to enact anti miscegenation laws and segregation laws in the United States. It also took root in France, Germany, and Great Britain and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was used as a justification for the forced sterilization of certain mental patients in the US, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Japan and Sweden (where the practice continued decades after WW2).

It was mostly the so called progressives of the day that were keen on it. That is until the Nazis gave it a bad name.

Sex is not a spectrum. A distribution with where 99.9% of the members belong in one of two categories is not a spectrum. It appears maths is on our side. It really isn't complicated.

Money talks. In a smallish sized city in america, the billionaire transwoman Jennifer Pritzker has given $18,000 to elect a convicted felon to county clerk. But wait, there's more. The convict had been in prison serving his sentence but only two days ago was paroled by the governor plus given an expungement of his criminal record. This happened only two days ago, six days before the local election. The day he was paroled, his wife stepped down from serving as state representative and the newly paroled gentleman says he plans to apply for her seat. As well as run for county clerk.

Pritzker is throwing tons of money hither and yon... I wonder how many scientists also benefited from Pritzker's largess?

(I'll withhold the name of the gentleman and town until after the election...)

Is 1600 a lot in that size population?

I wonder if a counter letter will be forthcoming.

sigh

As a working biologist, I have to say, I am not surprised though I am disappointed. Though I say hell yes to Jerry Coyne (the old curmudgeon) for standing up to the nonsense. Thank you Jerry.

Unfortunately the koolaid has been thoroughly drunk by many.

Several societies in America have made statements of this nature, specifically the Evolutionists (Society of the Study of Evolution), the Ecologists (Ecology Society of America) and the Naturalists (American society of Naturalists). Here's an example

Once your professional society makes a statement, that has an effect. Suddenly, you feel that you can't say anything or the people who review your papers, and your grants, might look at you like you're a bigot. You might not get a second look. It's stifling.

I've also had emails from pepole in my department advertising ways to improve the inclusivity of my biology teaching by talking about clownfish and pipefish and such. Which of course I already do becuase those are indeed fascinating examples, but they have fuckall to do with HUMANS which, in case anyone wasn't paying attention, are mammals, not fish.

I'm honestly just exasperated and I hope the whole thing will blow over but I am not particularly optomistic it will happen anytime soon.

Pritzker can buy off as many scientists as ssssshe wants and that's fine, but at the end of the day hundreds of millions of women aren't going to stand for creepy doods in the toilet.

Everybody (including myself a very long time ago) just wants to be nice. That all changed the moment I saw one trans acting like a creepy fetishist in a dress. It only took one because I immediately realized there'd be a lot more of THAT crawling out of the woodwork.

Sorry trans, this isn't going to work, nothing is going to work. Your own creepy fetishists that you refuse to eject from the trans umbrella will be your downfall. I'm just sorry that so many women and girls will have to suffer in the meantime. I'd like feminists to start noticing that the percentage of patriarchs never really changes from eon to eon and ask the question: what laws or etc could we engage that would take care of these people once and for all? So many women could have learned a second language or earned a different degree or just have so much more leisure with the amount of time we've all wasted dealing with sexism.

I am assuming that the scientists in question understand themselves to be opposing Trump and standing up for the rights of trans people. They are, from their perspective I’m sure, standing up for what is right.

And reading some of their statements, they are actually being quite careful to not misrepresent the science, but by talking about sex and gender together, deliberately confusing the issue.

This, for example.
“As a geneticist and as someone who studies reproduction on a biological level, I can safely say that their scientific reasons are simply not based in science,” Mollie Manier, an assistant professor of biology at George Washington University and one of the coauthors of the letter, told BuzzFeed News. “The science on gender is very much still in development, but more importantly, the lived experiences of transgender and intersex people should not be co-opted by a genetic test.”

The basic points are right - we don’t know if there is a genetic basis for gender expression, so the science of gender is still in development. And genetic tests on adult humans presenting as they wish, is a heavy-handed approach.

But the public might well come away from that believing that sexual dimorphism is in doubt - which is not true at all.

There is a concept called “sticky numbers”. It refers to statistics, or other concepts, which become their own evidence.

Someone, somewhere, with a degree of authority, quotes a statistic, which is a guess or bullshit even. It’s picked up by a newspaper or a government department or a researcher and reproduced. By the time this number has been quoted a few times, it becomes authoritative all on its own - because it has been quoted so many times.

Once you try and unearth the evidence, you’ll often find there’s absolutely no basis for the statistic, no evidence for the assertion. But by then, trying to change people’s minds is all but impossible. The statistic has glued itself to the subject.

That’s what’s going on here - except that the people promulgating “sex is a spectrum”, probably, hopefully, know better, but are replicating a falsehood in the service of ideology. For what they see as compassionate and politically correct reasons no doubt, but it’s a betrayal of their training and academic responsibility to truth.

It’s actually the same argument which is central to Gaudy Night. Should a member of the academy allow a falsehood to stand in the service of compassion, thereby betraying their academic integrity. Or should they turn away from individual compassion in favour of intellectual rigour.

Apollo404 that is a good point. However, worth also stating that eugenics did not disappear in 1945 - for example, the Galton Eugenics Laboratory in the UK became part of UCL Biology Department in 1996. A lot of formative work on chromosomes and genetics was done there after the Second World War. There are probably other examples around the world.

I read two very disturbing stories back to back in the Times world section. The first was about female feticide in India, where some parts of the country have fewer than 900 females for every 1000 boys. The second was about a man who had burnt his wife and two daughters to death because his wife had not produced a son. We could make a long list of such examples, it would go around the world. So, people understand sex and what a woman is. I feel very sad that women and girls are being killed and harmed the world over and eminent people are saying sex is not clear cut

For what they see as compassionate and politically correct reasons no doubt, but it’s a betrayal of their training and academic responsibility to truth.

Yep.

Although this is a letter written for a specific purpose to oppose a specific policy I am surprised so many put their name to this. It is deliberately both careful and careless at the same time. Pure partisan politics and in many ways unbecoming of these scientists.

The letter is careful because by mixing up sex and gender it states what most of us would agree with - you can't run a genetic test for gender identity. Careless because by co-opting intersex it tries to make out sex is on a spectrum when it clearly isn't. Trump has backed 'progressives' into a corner on this issue and this is how they come out fighting. I really don't think it will do them any good in the long run as I am sure it will get picked apart by those in the other camp.

Also none of this explains why so many trans people don't have GD. Also why the sudden upswing in numbers. Also why can't people just identify as they like without everyone having to pretend they have changed sex. Why do they need that validation?

We just keep holding the line that sex = biological science and gender identity = social science bollocks

I suspect that in the US it would be perfectly possible to get an equivalent number of scientists who were both climate change deniars and creationists. They'd mainly be engineers, or medics, all would have strong conservative religious beliefs. This lot have strong liberal religious beliefs - they just don't recognise that. It's an interesting phenomenon to observe.

I'd not heard of Jerry Coyne FWRLurker. I went and had a look at his blog. cor, curmudgeon is right isn't it? But he does seem to have a very clear view on this mess here:

whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/evolution-societies-issue-misleading-statement-about-sex/

so there are some scientists at least who understand the difference between sex and gender and why it's important.

If anyone claims they were born in the wrong body you should ask them Who’s body is that then?
Where did they end up?

aspieandproud